Always There
by JasmineRaven
Summary: 'I never saw him again, but he was always there.'


I never saw him again, but that never stopped me from trying. One afternoon, following a tiresome day at school, I stepped inside the Radley yard for the third time in my life. I walked quietly up the steps to the porch. There was once a time when just the look of the house was enough to make my heart race, hands tremble and legs shake. Now, the house's eerily silent atmosphere seemed calming to me. I studied the drawing I held in my hand one last time.

Jem hadn't agreed with my idea to draw a picture for Arthur. "Scout, what would a grown man want with a drawing? What's he s'pose to do with it?" he'd said, looking down at me as he spoke, as if his height and supposed superiority would somehow convince me the idea was absurd.

"He could put it on his wall or somethin'," I'd answered, waving my arms angrily. "How would you know what he likes and doesn't like?"

I smiled, gazing at the smiling faces of me and Arthur sitting in the shade of the tree, while the swirly yellow sun beamed down from the corner of the page. I carefully slid the picture under the front door.

"Boo... I mean, Mr Arthur, sir. It's Jean Louise," I called out. "I'm not sure if you're listenin', but I just wanted to say I made you somethin'. It's a picture. I drew it myself." For a moment, I thought I heard footsteps from inside the house. I waited anxiously for the door to open and Arthur to say hello, but the door remained closed, and the house remained dead quiet. "Mr Arthur, sir. I know you don't like comin' outside, but if you ever do come outside, I'd love to see you. Maybe we could play together!"

Atticus and Calpurnia always said I needed to learn to be patient, because there was a lot of waiting in life, so I decided to put their advice into to practice. I waited patiently for someone to answer the door. I waited until I could hear Cal hollering at me to come home for dinner. Hanging my head in disappointment, I traipsed down the steps of the porch, through the Radley yard, out the gate and back home.

"You better not've been hasslin' Mr Arthur," Cal said sternly, as I entered the house.

"I wasn't hasslin' nobody," I answered, as I took a seat at the table. "I was just givin' him a picture I drew."

Cal frowned. "Well, if Mr Arthur or Mr Nathan Radley ever tells you to stop goin' over there you stop," she ordered.

I made a habit of drawing pictures for Arthur. When I was bored at school, I would let my imagination wonder and create another picture of something I wished Arthur and I could do together. Sometimes I drew Dill there too, or Jem, if he was nice to me that day. I usually drew him frowning though, because he always seemed to be mad at me, and once I accidentally made his eyebrows so big they stuck out the side of his head like horns. My teacher would yell at me every time she caught me drawing in class, and she'd yell at me more when I'd explain that the reason I was drawing was because class was boring. One night, I told Atticus that I found the schoolwork too easy and I wanted to graduate now.

"Scout, if you graduate, you have to get a job," he told me, while he sat on the edge of my bed.

"I'll get a job. I'll be a lawyer like you," I told him.

Atticus laughed. "You're certainly good at arguin'," he said with a smile, before giving me a kiss goodnight.

School only got worse as the years progressed. I was labelled too much of a girl to play with the boys, and too much of a boy to play with the girls. My boredom with schoolwork persisted, along with my teacher's anger. I caused further arguments whenever I provided my opinion on 'topics I didn't understand'. Sometimes my melancholy would persist at home, when Atticus was busy and Jem was 'too grown up to play'.

One evening, I decided to venture to the Radley house, without a drawing. I sat on the porch for a while, thinking. When I eventually opened my mouth to speak, I started to cry. "I don't know how you do it," I said between sobs. "How do you live bein' lonely all the time? How do you live with folks not likin' you? I don't know what to do, Boo." I watched my tears splatter on the wooden porch, forming miniature puddles. Suddenly, a piece of folded paper slid under the door. I picked it up and unfolded it, revealing a neatly drawn smiley face. Somehow, the picture managed to make me smile, mostly because I now knew he was listening to me. I wasn't alone.

It wasn't long before my twelfth birthday approached. It happened to fall on a school day, so Atticus said we would celebrate when I came home that afternoon. Calpurnia baked a delicious cake, which I happily devoured two slices of. Atticus bought me a new dress and Jem gave me some of his old books.

"You'll like 'em," he assured me. "They're about stuff you'll learn later in school."

Beaming with joy, I placed my gifts back on the table. Then, I noticed it: a flat, rectangular parcel, wrapped in brown paper, with my name neatly inscribed on it.

"Who is this one from?" I asked curiously, groping the parcel in an attempt to feel what was inside.

"I found it on the porch this mornin'," Atticus explained. "Open it, Scout."

I ripped a tear in the brown paper and carefully peeled it off, revealing the gift. It looked like a scrapbook. When I opened the book, much to my surprise, I found one of my drawings I'd given to Arthur pasted onto the front page. I flicked through the pages, only to discover all of them filled with my drawings, except the last page. The skill of the artist responsible for the last drawing far surpassed mine. After a moment of gazing, mesmerised by the intricate detail, I realised the picture was of me. The artist portrayed me in a happy state, with a beaming smile across my face. I traced the smooth lines that created my dark hair with my finger. It looked smooth and beautiful. The artist knew my appearance, down to the most unnoticeable freckle on my cheek. The gift warmed my heart and caused tears to well up in my eyes.

I never saw him again, but he was always there.


End file.
